Congrats to Darshini for earning the Student of the Month honor! She will receive not only priceless glory & endless bragging rights, but also gift certificates to Music Time Academy & Livermore Cinemas.

Instrument: Violin

Teacher: Judy

Age: 10

Grade: 5th

School: Lawrence Elementary School

Student Since: 2012

Hobbies (besides practicing): Dubbing (on musical.ly), baking, singing

FROM JUDY, DARSHINI'S TEACHER:

Darshini has been playing violin since she was 6 years old! Her bubbly and charismatic self has kept our lessons filled with laughter and has also transcended to her playing. She is always outgoing and likes to perform in front of big groups - earning 60 tickets in one day for our concert raffle! On our Winter Concert in 2016, Darshini was determined to win our grand prize of an iPad mini. With her hard work and perseverance (plus a little luck) she was thrilled to hear her name called to receive her prize! Keep up the good work Darshini! 

"I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I  work , the more I have of it." - Thomas Jefferson

I understand you’re not the only musician in the family (and yes, I understand that is not a question).

Pretty much my whole family is musical. I grew up with my dad just playing a bunch of instruments, mainly guitar. He had this really awesome vintage organ. Occasionally my mom would hop on vocals & they would sing duets when I was a kid. I used to steal his guitar all the time and he would get mad at me for doing that!

 

Was your father a professional musician?

Not per say, not on paper. When my dad was younger in Nicaragua he had a band and they played a lot of gigs out there. They would travel to different parts of the country and play gigs. He knew what was up, what I was getting myself into. He was in his mid 20s when he left Nicaragua. He was about to have a family with my mom so he put music on the backburner, for most of his life actually. When he moved to the states it became jamming with buddies.

Any other musical tendencies in the family?

My brother has always been a vocalist on the hip hop scene, since that’s been a thing. He gave me a different perspective as to what music could be. It was interesting having my dad as the more organic musician and having my brother be more on the electronic, modern side. As a kid I remember he and his buddies coming over and making beats. They were using analog samplers and 8 track recorders, all the really old school stuff that was available at the time. When I was lucky, I would get to sit in on a night and watch them do their thing, which was pretty cool. 

How did you get started in music?

My first instrument technically is piano. I played that from when I was 4-ish. It was off and on, sometimes I was into it, sometimes I wasn't. I would go to a formal teacher for weekly lessons until I was about 7. I would write songs on the keyboard. I was really into video games - not much has changed since then. I would learn to play that stuff and try to write that stuff myself. 

And how did you get into guitar?

My dad would try to teach me chords when I was 9 or 10, and I would get frustrated. He would teach me chords & a couple of really folky songs. The later part of middle school was when Nirvana came out and I was like “Ok that’s it. I like this.” Something about that sound really, really struck a chord with me, pun intended. And i just decided to be a guitar player. When I was about 12 or 13 I played an electric guitar for the first time and I was hooked. It was done! At that point, I knew I needed a guitar. I was so afraid to ask my parents for it, but I did. I stuck to guitar since then.

You asked your parents for an electric guitar?

I was kind of jamming around on this beater acoustic guitar that my dad gave me when he noticed that I was really into it (and I just kept taking his guitar). “Where’s my guitar?”, “Sorry, Dad!” After a while he just gave me a guitar that he brought back from Nicaragua. I got more serious, I got songbooks and really learning how to play my parents got me an electric guitar.

How were you learning guitar at that time? 

I was learning how to play songs that I liked out of books. Just practicing that stuff every day. I always had a creative bug in me. Around sophomore year in high school I started writing tunes and hooking up with friends that played other instruments. I started a couple bands in high school, one pretty steady one, on the grungy/metal side. At that point, I had been listening to a lot of Metallica. I was really obsessed with those guys for a long time so a lot of it was based on that. Very aggressive stuff.

Did you play many gigs with this band?

We got invited to people's house parties and played those. Our first official gig was actually our last. It was at a dive bar. We were all 17/18 and the manager was freaking out. Before we even got set up, they kicked us out of the bar for being too young!

What was your next step after that band?

After high school, I went to Silicon Valley College and got a degree in graphics. The job market was bad so I took a few years off then went to DVC. For a while, music was not a prevalent thing in my life. I was focused on trying to find a tech job and got a few odd jobs here and there. I worked at Borders for a long time and started picking up music a lot more around then. Music was always there but I didn't’ start seriously pursuing it until that time. Borders would hire me to play at special events to play acoustic songs that I wrote, cover tunes, just anything kind of folky.. 

So you were not doing music that was so aggressive? How did you change directions from the heavier stuff? 

A big game-changer group for me was Rush. Then I discovered Yes after that, which was pretty different and more like classical, more melodic. That helped broaden my perspective on what rhythm is and what harmony is. Prog rock came first. It was a game changer for me when it came to playing music! It’s the borderline between being melodic & being crazy with your rhythms and chords. It doesn't adhere to a formula, and it’s very musical. That was a huge appeal to me, the whole grandioseness of it.

What brought you to Diablo Valley College?

I went to DVC specifically to pursue music. It was so much of an everyday thing in my life at that point, it would be stupid not to, since the tech stuff wasn't working out. I’ve been playing music for so long, might as well be as well-educated in it as I can be!

What sort of classes did you take in college?

I did everything they would let me do. I retook a lot of classes there, too! At that point in my life I was very hungry for music, any music. DVC was a great catalyst for exposing me to new things and explaining to me things that I already knew. They would puts names to the concepts that I knew. It exposed me to how to intentionally make that sound. I was familiar with the sounds of the things I was playing, mostly through piano lessons, but didn't’ really know what they were called until I got to DVC. When I continued with the courses, the whole world expanded, I just learned so much more than I thought I would ever know. 

Did formal education affect your songwriting? Did the songwriting process change for you during this time?

I had a lot of struggles with that after taking a semester. I had a big fear that my creativity would diminish because I knew all these patterns and formulas. But now, it only helps to augment what I do. It helps me to not only to help remember something without playing it first, but to take something that might already be an established thing that we're used to hearing and change it in a way to make it my own. I feel that it’s only helped to aid the songwriting process, even though I thought it would not. I thought it would hinder me, but it didn’t.

The first semester was, “OK now I know all these concepts and I can’t stop analyzing everything, listening and putting a label on it.” That was a very cumbersome experience! Before that, it was all free-form and I didn't really know what I was doing. Once I really learned what I was doing, I caught wind that I had a style myself & became aware of that style, and used the knowledge to work within that style. 

After this experience, how do you approach teaching your students that may have similar fears and struggles? Do you teach both creativity and theory together?

I try to teach the cliches, or whatever is common practice, just so you have the framework for the sound that you’re trying to achieve. Then I will show how you can augment that sound with your own input, which can be a hard thing to do! Once you have a formula, it’s hard to deviate from that formula sometimes.

If you’re being taught well, the two will meet at some point and you shouldn't fear that one is going to take over the other, particularly if your education is going to make your creativity diminish.